Review: Zoom H2N Handy Recorder

Zoom has been doing the portable recorder thing for a long time now. Through years of development and refinement of the basic concepts, as well as throwing in various bells and whistles, its pretty much figured out how to tick all the boxes in terms of ergonomics, features and sound quality. Zoom’s latest offering, the H2n, is not the smallest recording device ever made but instead offers an impressive array of features including X/Y, mid-side and surround recording as well as handy extras such as a built-in speaker, tuner and metronome while being easy to operate and pretty light on the wallet by today’s standards.

POCKET ROCKET

At 67.6mm x 113.85mm the H2n is about the length and width of an old-fashioned audio cassette while curving out to a relatively tubby 42.7mm in depth and weighing in at 130g without batteries. It’s compact enough to sit inconspicuously on a desk during an interview while exuding a modestly professional aura thanks to the shiny black plastic finish and all-concealing black steel mesh microphone cage. Personally, I like this look better than the exposed microphone style, where I immediately imagine all the ways I could accidentally damage the device beyond repair. The unit runs on two standard AA batteries for up to 20 hours when recording at 44.1kHz, which is generous. Durability is an oft-overlooked aspect of the mini-recorder market but the H2n seems sturdy enough and during the couple of months I’ve been using it there’s been no reliability issues whatsoever. Having said that, I wouldn’t be game to drop it on a hard floor as there’s a lot of electronics lurking just below the surface of the H2n.

CONNECT FOUR

One of the aspects I really like about the Zoom’s latest offering is the front of the device: a screen that keeps you informed of all vital signs and a large Record button with a red dot on it – nice and to the point! The left side is peppered with I/O ports: minijacks for external mic input, headphones and dedicated remote port, mini USB for computer data interfacing and a +/- volume control. On the right side of the unit there’s a menu button, multi-function transport control (play, fast forward, rewind and stop), a generously-proportioned continuously variable record level dial and a power switch that can be latched to prevent accidental power-downs at inappropriate moments. On the top of the unit is the real audio candy: an illuminated switch that selects any one of the four available microphone recording patterns. These are stereo X/Y, stereo MS, four-channel surround or four-channel internally summed to stereo. The screen itself is a tastefully backlit number which in recording mode offers information on battery status, microphone pattern, recording time, sample resolution and bit-rate, any limiting or compression settings as well as an easily visible and responsive LED meter and a clock.

WHAT’S ON THE MENU

The H2n’s features run quite deep once you head into the menu and start tooling around. You’ve got a lot of options for compression and limiting setups, low-cut filtering and optional automatic recording gain adjustment. You can tinker with the mid-side spread as well as parameters such as adjustable playback speed, raw or pre-mixed MS processing, and the list goes on. File management is very straight forward. Your computer sees the H2n as a standard USB storage device and the files (stored internally on a standard SD or SDHC card) can be downloaded in a jiffy. The H2n will record at up to 96kHz resolution in stereo modes and 48kHz in four-channel modes as well as in compressed MP3 format. As an added bonus the unit ships with Steinberg’s Wavelab LE software.

CAPTURE & RELEASE

I’m quite fond of the H2n. Firstly, the sound quality is excellent, and with a little tinkering of the record levels and limiter settings you can capture everything from live gigs to quiet atmospheres with relative ease. Also the continuously variable record level control sets it a peg above the dreaded ‘auto-record level only’ devices.

Secondly, the MS and surround recording modes are just fun! I’ve done some ambient recordings walking around rooms and outdoor locations and the representation these modes give you of physical spaces can be genuinely stunning. If you’ve recorded in Raw mode you can then of course drag it all back into your DAW and tweak it to your heart’s content. I’ve recorded interviews, rehearsals, impromptu kitchen jams and birds singing in the backyard, and in each of these cases the surround capabilities of the H2n mean I’m getting a better representation of what actually happened than I would with a stereo-only device.

Finally, I find the little fella very easy to use, only delving into the manual and menus now and again when I need to tweak something for a particular scenario. In general, I just grab the H2n and hit the Record button – a great thing in my book and testament to the oft forgotten fact that although many machines like this offer an abundance of features, they should help you concentrate on what you record, not how you record it. And in this respect, Zoom has hit the bullseye with the H2n.